In order to maintain some thread of continuity through the
perplexed and tangled vicissitudes of the Italian race, it has been
necessary to disregard those provinces which did not
immediately contribute to the formation of its history.
For this reason we have left the whole of the south up
Norman conquest
of the Two Sicilies.
to the present point unnoticed. Sicily in the hands of
the Mussulmans, the Theme of Lombardy abandoned to
the weak suzerainty of the Greek catapans, the Lombard duchy
of Benevento slowly falling to pieces and the maritime republics
of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi extending their influence by commerce
in the Mediterranean, were in effect detached from the
Italian regno, beyond the jurisidiction of Rome, included in no
parcel of Italy proper. But now the moment had arrived when
this vast group of provinces, forming the future kingdom of the
Two Sicilies, was about to enter definitely and decisively within
the bounds of the Italian community. Some Norman adventurers,
on pilgrimage to St Michael’s shrine on Monte Gargano, lent
their swords in 1017 to the Lombard cities of Apulia against the
Greeks. Twelve years later we find the Normans settled at
Aversa under their Count Rainulf. From this station as a centre
the little band of adventurers, playing the Greeks off against the
Lombards, and the Lombards against the Greeks, spread their
power in all directions, until they made themselves the most considerable
force in southern Italy. William of Hauteville was
proclaimed count of Apulia. His half-brother, Robert Wiskard
or Guiscard, after defeating the papal troops at Civitella in 1053,
received from Leo IX. the investiture of all present and future
conquests in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, which he agreed to hold
as fiefs of the Holy See. Nicholas II. ratified this grant, and confirmed
the title of count. Having consolidated their possessions
on the mainland, the Normans, under Robert Guiscard’s brother,
the great Count Roger, undertook the conquest of Sicily in 1060.
After a prolonged struggle of thirty years, they wrested the
whole island from the Saracens; and Roger, dying in 1101,
bequeathed to his son Roger a kingdom in Calabria and Sicily
second to none in Europe for wealth and magnificence. This,
while the elder branch of the Hauteville family still held the title
and domains of the Apulian duchy; but in 1127, upon the death
of his cousin Duke William, Roger united the whole of the future
realm. In 1130 he assumed the style of king of Sicily, inscribing
upon his sword the famous hexameter—
This Norman conquest of the two Sicilies forms the most romantic episode in medieval Italian history. By the consolidation of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily into a powerful kingdom, by checking the growth of the maritime republics and by recognizing the over-lordship of the papal see, the house of Hauteville influenced the destinies of Italy with more effect than any of the princes who had previously dealt with any portion of the peninsula. Their kingdom, though Naples was from time to time separated from Sicily, never quite lost the cohesion they had given it; and all the disturbances of equilibrium in Italy were due in after days to papal manipulation of the rights acquired by Robert Guiscard’s act of homage. The southern regno, in the hands of the popes, proved an insurmountable obstacle to the unification of Italy, led to French interference in Italian affairs, introduced the Spaniard and maintained in those rich southern provinces the reality of feudal sovereignty long after this alien element had been eliminated from the rest of Italy (see Normans; Sicily: History).
For the sake of clearness, we have anticipated the course of events by nearly a century. We must now return to the date of Hildebrand’s elevation to the papacy in 1073, when he chose the memorable name of Gregory VII. In the next year after his election Hildebrand convened War of investitures. a council, and passed measures enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. In 1075 he caused the investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries by secular potentates of any degree to be condemned. These two reforms, striking at the most cherished privileges and most deeply-rooted self-indulgences of the aristocratic caste in Europe, inflamed the bitterest hostility. Henry IV., king of Germany, but not crowned emperor, convened a diet in the following year at Worms, where Gregory was deposed and excommunicated. The pope followed with a counter excommunication, far more formidable, releasing the king’s subjects from their oaths of allegiance. War was thus declared between the two chiefs of western Christendom, that war of investitures which out-lasted the lives of both Gregory and Henry, and was not terminated till the year 1122. The dramatic episodes of this struggle are too well known to be enlarged upon. In his single-handed duel with the strength of Germany, Gregory received material assistance from the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. She was the last heiress of the great house of Canossa, whose fiefs stretched from Mantua across Lombardy, passed the Apennines, included the Tuscan plains, and embraced a portion of the duchy of Spoleto. It was in her castle of Canossa that Henry IV. performed his three days’ penance in the winter of 1077; and there she made the cession of her vast domains to the church. That cession, renewed after the death of Gregory to his successors, conferred upon the popes indefinite rights, of which they afterwards availed themselves in the consolidation of their temporal power. Matilda died in the year 1115. Gregory had passed before her from the scene of his contest, an exile at Salerno, whither Robert Guiscard carried him in 1084 from the anarchy of rebellious Rome. With unbroken spirit, though the objects of his life were unattained, though Italy and Europe had been thrown into confusion, and the issue of the conflict was still doubtful, Gregory expired in 1085 with these words on his lips: “I loved justice, I hated iniquity, therefore in banishment I die.”
The greatest of the popes thus breathed his last; but the new spirit he had communicated to the papacy was not destined to expire with him. Gregory’s immediate successors, Victor III., Urban II. and Paschal II., carried on his struggle with Henry IV. and his imperial antipopes, encouraging the emperor’s son to rebel against him, and stirring up Europe for the first crusade. When Henry IV. died, his own son’s prisoner, in 1106, Henry V. crossed the Alps, entered Rome, wrung the imperial coronation from Paschal II. and compelled the pope to grant his claims on the investitures. Scarcely had he returned to Germany when the Lateran disavowed all that the pope had done, on the score that it had been extorted by force. France sided with the church. Germany rejected the bull of investiture. A new descent into Italy, a new seizure of Rome, proved of no avail. The emperor’s real weakness was in Germany, where his subjects openly expressed their discontent. He at last abandoned the contest which had distracted Europe. By the concordat of Worms, 1122, the emperor surrendered the right of investiture by ring and staff, and granted the right of election to the clergy. The popes were henceforth to be chosen by the cardinals, the bishops by the chapters subject to the pope’s approval. On the other hand the pope ceded to the emperor the right of investiture by the sceptre. But the main issue of the struggle was not in these details of ecclesiastical government; principles had been at stake far deeper and more widely reaching. The respective relations of pope and emperor, ill-defined in the compact between Charles the Great and Leo III., were brought in question, and the two chief potentates of Christendom, no longer tacitly concordant, stood against each other in irreconcilable rivalry. Upon this point, though the battle seemed to be a drawn one, the popes were really victors. They remained independent of the emperor, but the emperor had still to seek the crown at their hands. The pretensions of Otto the Great and Henry III. to make popes were gone for ever (see Papacy; Investiture).
IV. Age of the Communes.—The final gainers, however, by the
war of investitures were the Italians. In the first place, from
this time forward, owing to the election of popes by
the Roman curia, the Holy See remained in the hands
of Italians; and this, though it was by no means an
Rise of
free cities.
unmixed good, was a great glory to the nation. In the
next place, the antagonism of the popes to the emperors, which
became hereditary in the Holy College, forced the former to
assume the protectorate of the national cause. But by far the
greatest profit the Italians reaped was the emancipation of their
